The present invention relates to a storage management method for a storage subsystem and a storage management system and, particularly, to a technique effectively applied to storage management used when logical resources and physical resources of a single storage subsystem are divided for operation.
With recent advance of large amounts of storage subsystem, as observed in utilizing storage service providers, there has been carried out such utilization that a single storage subsystem is shared by a plurality of customers. In this utilization, individual system administrators independently manage resources allocated for each customer.
To carry out the utilization with security and efficiency, division management is not implemented by a utilizing method or storage management software, but the storage subsystem itself is such that it has resource-dividing management functions.
Conventionally, as a storage management technique for the storage subsystem having such resource-dividing management functions, regarding a service function provided to a user of storage resources from a service provider, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-230189 (Patent Document 1) discloses a technique of a service provision system, which can manage and control the number of users available for the individual service functions of the storage subsystem and the total amount of storage resources used by the service users, thereby imposing appropriate licenses on the service function that the service provider provides to the user.
Additionally, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-259214 (Patent Document 2) discloses a technique for controlling access to a storage device, the technique being such that control-system calling access to a data storage device from a host system is controlled by access restriction preset and devices which the access permits to each user and actions which are permitted by the access can be controlled.